Five Eyes backdoor in Encryption

Community Tech Policy & News
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Not only did my position not change at all, but I even provided elaboration, clarification and examples. I find it quite disturbing that you would be so intellectually dishonest to assert such a thing. Not a good example for a moderator to be making. Maybe you should lock this thread because you are insulting other members of the community and are turning the thread toxic?

Aren’t the conspiracy nuts the ones that are convinced they are right in thinking something, when everyone else thinks the opposite? :thinking: Sounds a lot like what you are saying. Hmmm…

Remember:

Look, I appreciate that some members of the community are happy to blindly believe whatever their governments tell them. That’s your prerogative. That doesn’t mean you need to be condescending and hostile towards people who hold a different view.

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Trouble is open source crosses the world and nations.

If you dont ban that then encryption is a known tech ?

It that simple.

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Where am I intellectually dishonest?

Your statement changed. :man_shrugging:

You started saying it was about terrorism, specifically that this has nothing whatsoever to do with “fighting terrorism” (the publication never once says “fighting terrorism”)

You then said

The different labels are used simply to appeal to/target different segments of the population.

but that’s not what you said initially. You just took my reply tacked it on as if that was good enough, but anyone can do that. That does mean what you said changed.

I said what you said changed and you never provided evidence. Maybe it was blunt? But I don’t see how it was condescending or hostile? (I’ve no intention of begin hostile towards anyone)

Have you read the article? My replies about the topic have been based off the information given from the Australian publication, of which no one seams to have read?

What do you think i’m saying that i’m right in thinking something?

What have I actually said in this topic? I’ve questioned where people have got information as it hasn’t come from the publication and as source wasn’t provided; I’ve questioned some things people have said because it contradicts what the publication said; and I’ve posed some questions based on these.

My thoughts so far is that many people are basing their thoughts on information from a year or more ago but aren’t looking at the new information and talking about the differences, similarities, what that might mean, and why there are differences in stance from what was said a year or more ago to what seems to be suggested now.

The only thing i’m trying to do is challenge people to read the article and consider what it says.

Have you read it? As still, no one seems to have any opinion on what was actually said.

There’s a lot of information in that new publication waiting to be taken apart line by line, but it seems to me like no one is that bothered by what it says. Strange considering people seem to care a lot about the topic in general.

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For the moment there doesn’t seem to be any suggestion that they want to ban encryption. As mentioned earlier they do state the importance of encryption for the protection of personal, commercial and government information.

Is it a possibility? Yes. Since they are sovereign nations, the meeting isnt about making them all implement one method, a nation could in theory believe that banning types of encryption is the way to go. But the article seems to suggest that that likely isnt on the table.

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But that flies in the face of strong encryption. Its either hot air and hand waving or action to break computers.

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I’m not sure i get what you mean? If you mean its one or the other, either they limit or break encryption or do nothing. You can get access to un-encrypted data without breaking strong encryption.

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I’m not currently in a state to be able to debate you but I noticed you didn’t read the two articles I posted earlier on Australia. Inside it mentioned rather than creating a back door, they want to force organisations to send encrypted data to some entity along side the pair to pair encrypted data. While I would argue that’s worse, what is your opinion on this?

While you have voiced a lot on definitive facts on what is in the articles, you haven’t really discussed the articles much at all so what I’m asking is, what is your actual opinion on the content on the articles? Considering it does effect privacy and security on a case by case bases

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Well Normies dont know what is so is fair game as always. Limit encryption is either outlaw it or break it. And people that use open source are then criminal scum or security minded.

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Yes, the old men ruling the world keep trying to legislate against mathematics. Obviously they will fail. Just more stupidity.

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Just a side note to provide the thought process of the recently ex prime minister of Australia

Another side note is to think of the context of apple devices and the US government suing apple about the encrypted phones.

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My people are morons. And criminals

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As a kiwi, I will support that statement /s

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I assume this is the article;

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national-security/five-country-ministerial-2018/access-evidence-encryption

There is a second page as well;
https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/national-security/five-country-ministerial-2018/countering-illicit-use-online-spaces

I don’t know enough to engage in this discussion other than “feelings”.

Governments are made of individuals. In every group there are bad actors, including government. My feeling is that these proposed laws are well meaning but are ripe for misuse. I distrust and dislike authority of any kind as I’ve run into the bad apples personally. There are laws that shouldn’t be in existence but are there to benefit the rich or corporations. An example is marijuana laws. From my reading the original reason for laws against weed had to do with the cost of newsprint. Hemp was cheaper than an existing material [sorry, my memory of details escapes me at the moment]. Thus the laws helped a rich individual curtail competition. In the same way these laws can be used by unscrupulous individuals. I wouldn’t want my government having the ability to have a backdoor into anyones data. This is along the lines of " I would rather have 1,000 criminals go free than have one innocent be incarcerated/executed".

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The software is done. Now it ban it or you can use it.Or what’s your password or go to jail.

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It depends. Worse then breaking or banning encryption?

I’ve read most of them, I might have missed one, this is the one i read that talked about other methods than breaking encryption. But not specifically sending data side by side, which is that one?

The article above for example talks about alternative methods

Australia plans to gain access to the communication between certain suspects and intercept the messages as they are sent, basically reading the texts as soon as the recipient does.

Is this worse? Id probably say no.

The effect of forcefully weakening encryption is already known. The US considered anything above 40-bit encryption a munition until 1996 and there were export laws restricting the use of anything stronger1

There is no reason that laws shouldn’t exist which enable the government to protect the country, new legislation comes into existence because old legislation doesn’t apply to new inventions as they can be specific in nature.

I see no reasons anyone should have issue with that, unless your an anarchist.
(the implementation of a piece of legislation in general, not necessarily an obviously bad piece of legislation. keeping in mind context. I know that’s statement is ripe for strawman arguments :smile: )

The major issue I think is around proportionality, warranty requirements, and oversight. With newer technologies giving greater access to larger amounts of information, you need to ensure the correct frameworks are in place for new legislation so that they can be executed appropriately.

This is the key issue i think. Not that there shouldn’t be legislation in this area, but that the level of oversight must be high. After all we’re not talking about a new thing, just a new medium. Legislation exists to do similar things for all other types of investigatory requirements.

The new publication seems to also agree with your here.

We have to keep in mind as well that it is just a statement of principles outlining high level observations and agreed principles for the topic they are attempting to solve.

The question I guess is where does anyone want to start? Is there a section of the statement that you disagree with?

I get the impression that this is the concern for a lot of people, not necessarily the need for legislation but the potential for misuse.

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While we are a stupid country. I read the article. Every Software maker on the planet needs a backdoor for Australia :slight_smile:

China got windows source code. Australia is getting a nothing burger.

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This is the key issue. Many people, like myself do not trust our governments to use these tools for good. If it was creating a back door in an encryption method, that’s another story and should never be done but this, this is on one hand better in that it doesn’t break encryption. However how is this data sorted? Is this method of collecting moral or even viable? Can we trust our governments to use our data only for the best for the people. Can we trust the companies implementing this?

My opinion is a no. After what has happened with America, revealed through snowdens leaks, I would say this is a moral breach of privacy and there is no way I could trust my government with this information. I also have issues with the suggested method of implementation. In theory, it is viable to plant information and send messages to incremenate a person using the suggested method the Australian government suggests.

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At the point where you can’t even finish a sentence without contradicting yourself, you should probably give up…

Anyway, to help you understand what is actually happening down under, Malcolm Turnbull (Prime Minister of Australia) said on July 14, 2017:

Now one of the big challenges we face is that of encryption. Increasingly communications across the internet, whether it’s messaging applications or voice applications, are encrypted end-to-end. That means that while they can be intercepted, they can’t be read, they can’t be interpreted other than with considerable difficulty.

So what we’re seeking to do, working with the other leading economies in the world, is to ensure that the brilliant tech companies in Silicon Valley and their emulators, bring their brilliance to bear to assist the rule of law. To enable us to be able - not through back doors or any sort of untoward means - but legitimately, appropriately, with the force of law, in the usual way that applies in the offline world, enable our law enforcement agencies to have access to these communications so that they can keep us safe.

In layman’s terms: Encryption is fine, but anyone that provides an encrypted service to others must also provide the unencrypted communications/data to the government.

That’s what everyone in the world rightfully calls a “back door”. The back door is, however, implemented at the provider/service/app level, not the protocol level.

Everything since then has been government lies and spin trying to convince people that a back door is not a back door.

Whether the back door is applied at the provider/service/app or protocol level makes no difference to the people whose privacy has been violated.

Arguing about the mechanics of privacy violation seems far less constructive — to me at least — than recognising the real targets of privacy violation. The four examples provided earlier are just a few of the many, many, many cases where governments have and continue to abuse legislation enacted under false pretexts. They have a proven track record of not being able to be trusted. No more needs to be said.

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If windows and OS X give the australian government access…there world wide broken OS’s overnite.

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Haven’t read as I’m exhausted. Though it doesn’t matter if I agree with you or not, neither of you seem to be debating with a common ground and this discussion will go no where. @Eden and @level1, you guys need to find each others base of morality on the issue. This is a moral issue of all things and the way things are going, no one is going to understand the others view

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